The Majors

by W. E. B Griffin

  There were two means of aerial travel from XIX Corps (Group) in North Korea to Eighth U. S. Army Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. One was by light army aircraft; Cessna L-19s, observation and liaison aircraft which would carry one passenger; and DeHavilland L-20s, “Beavers,” of Teeny-Weeny Airlines, which carried six passengers. In addition, there were two North American “Navions” at XIX Corps (Group), but these were generally reserved for the corps commander, Lieutenant General E. Z. Black, or one of the other five general officers assigned to the corps.

  The second means of aerial transportation was the milk-run gooney bird, which stopped at XIX Corps (Group) as its last stop on a round-robin flight from K16 (Kimpo) in Seoul to the three corps (I, IX, and X) and one corps (group) (XIX) on the front lines.

  The C-47 gooney bird was faster and more comfortable than the light army aircraft and thus popular with senior officers. Officers at I, IX, and X Corps, however, which were closer to Seoul, sometimes found that if they tried to get to Seoul on the milk-run gooney bird, they got no further than XIX Corps (Group) where they were bumped (Rank Hath Its Priviliges) by senior XIX Corps (Group) officers and left to get to Seoul the best way they could. This was because XIX Corps (Group) was, in everything but name, an army, with an army-sized complement of senior officers. Consequently, the low man in a milk-run passenger seat was seldom any more junior than a lieutenant colonel.

  There were three full bull colonels and three light birds in the seats of the milk-run gooney bird when it touched down at the XIX Corps (Group) airstrip. A young lieutenant, who looked as if he was torn between pleasure and worry about brass-hat wrath, climbed up the folding step to make his announcement.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sorry. You’ve been bumped.”

  There was some grumbling, and after a moment, a full bull colonel in his late fifties asked incredulously, “Certainly, Lieutenant, not all of us?”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said. “All of you.”

  When they had collected their gear and climbed back out of the gooney bird, the three full colonels stood by the wing. They had each separately concluded that it was highly unlikely that there were six full colonels, each of them senior in grade to themselves.

  A jeep, top down, drove up to where the gooney bird sat at the extreme end of the narrow dirt runway. The jeep held four passengers, all enlisted men, one more passenger than regulations prescribed. In addition, there was a motley collection of luggage, some GI barracks bags, some canvas Valv-Paks, and three civilian suitcases. While authorities generally looked the other way at Valv-Paks, regulations proscribed civilian suitcases in Korea. They were supposed to be entrusted to the Quartermaster Corps in Japan for safekeeping.

  The enlisted men—a middle-aged master sergeant, a sorrowful-faced technical sergeant, a baby-faced staff sergeant, and a buck sergeant—got out of the jeep, and with the driver, formed a human chain to load the luggage onto the aircraft. Buried under the personal luggage were several GI equipment cases. When all the luggage was on board, the enlisted men climbed onto the airplane.

  When they did not emerge after sufficient time for them to have stowed and tied down the luggage and equipment cases, one of the colonels, curiosity aroused, went to the aircraft door and looked inside. The enlisted men were seated in the seats the brass had just been ordered to vacate.

  The colonel climbed aboard the C-47 and went to the middle-aged master sergeant.

  “What the hell is going on here, Sergeant?” he demanded.

  “Sergeant Greer is in charge, sir,” the middle-aged master sergeant said, nodding his head at the baby-faced staff sergeant, who, having taken off his stiff-crowned “Ridgeway hat” (after Gen. Matthew Ridgeway, who had found the issue fatigue cap unmilitary and stiffened his with cardboard), looked even younger.

  The colonel went to Staff Sergeant Greer, whom he now remembered having seen around the general’s office.

  “You’re in charge, Sergeant?” the colonel demanded. “Is that correct?”

  “For the moment, sir, yes, sir,” Staff Sergeant Greer replied.

  “Presumably you’re on orders?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “May I see them, please?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What do you mean, ‘No, sir’?” the colonel demanded, furiously.

  “We ready to go, Greer?” a voice called out. The colonel saw a full colonel, one he recognized, Colonel Carson Newburgh, officially the XIX Corps (Group) headquarters commandant, the man in charge of housekeeping. The colonel was also aware that Carson Newburgh was a good deal more influential than military housekeepers usually are. He was a reserve officer, a Texan, an Aggie, an oil millionaire. He had gone across Africa and Europe with E. Z. Black. E. Z. Black had gone into combat in North Africa with the “Hell’s Circus” Armored Division as a major. When Eisenhower had stopped Hell’s Circus on the banks of the Elbe, twenty-four hours—no more—from Berlin, E. Z. Black had been a major general, commanding. Carson Newburgh had been with him there, too, as a light bird. And he’d come back on active duty when Black had been given XIX Corps (Group) in Korea.

  He was the only man in Korea who dared to call Ezakiah Zachariah Black “E. Z.” to his face.

  “You got the boss’s bags,” baby-faced Staff Sergeant Greer called back, “then we’re ready.”

  The colonel made his way back down the cabin of the gooney bird. Colonel Carson Newburgh gave him a faint smile and a curious look. The colonel had hoped to avoid meeting General Black. He did not.

  General Black got on the airplane, and then turned around. Leaning out the door, he pointed a finger at another master sergeant, this one enormous, black, and sad-faced. “Goddamnit,” Lieutenant General E. Z. Black said, “I told you why you can’t go.”

  “Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said.

  “Take a goddamned R&R,” General Black said. “That’s an order, Wesley, goddamnit, not a suggestion.”

  “Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said.

  “Greer, goddamnit, speaks French, and you don’t,” General Black concluded. “You’d be excess baggage.”

  “Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said. “I understand I’d be excess baggage, sir.”

  “Oh, shit,” General Black said. “Get on the goddamned airplane.”

  “Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said, and with surprising grace for his bulk, climbed aboard.

  General Black’s eyes fell on the colonel. They were icy cold.

  “Just debarking, sir,” the colonel said.

  General Black met the eyes of Colonel Newburgh.

  “Wesley’s been with me longer than you have,” General Black said, defensively.

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Newburgh said, smiling broadly.

  “That will be twenty dollars, thank you kindly, Colonel Newburgh, sir,” baby-faced Staff Sergeant Greer said.

  “Goddamnit, Greer, did you actually bet I’d bring him along?” General Black asked. “Am I that goddamned predictable?”

  “To those of us who know and love you so well, sir,” Staff Sergeant Greer said, unctuously.

  “Go to hell, Greer,” General Black said. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get the show on the road.”

  The enormous black master sergeant was waiting impatiently at the door for the colonel to get off the aircraft. When he did, he effortlessly pulled the heavy door closed and then settled himself on the floor for the takeoff.

  (Three)

  K16 Air Base

  Seoul, South Korea

  12 March 1954

  The milk-run gooney bird from XIX Corps (Group) came in low over the Han River bridge, which had been dropped into the river in the early days of the police action and which the engineers had subsequently repaired so that it was partially usable, and touched down at K16. The pilot contacted ground control. Instead of being ordered to proceed down the taxiway to the terminal, he was ordered on a roundabout trip around the airfield, up and down taxiways and across runways
, and finally ordered to stop before an unmarked hangar on the civilian side of the field.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” he asked of his copilot. The copilot didn’t reply. Instead, he pointed out the windshield to a man in a light gray flight suit who was making the standard arm signals (a finger pointing, and a hand making a cutting motion across his throat) ordering him to shut down the port (passenger door side) engine.

  Unless the pilot’s eyes were failing him, the man performing this buck-sergeant, ground-handler operation wore the star of a brigadier general and the wings of a master aviator.

  The pilot cut the port engine.

  Lt. General E. Z. Black and his party debarked the aircraft and disappeared through a small door in the huge hangar door. The buck general ground handler made a get-it-out-of-here signal with his hand.

  “Air Force 879,” ground control said in the pilot’s earphones. “Take taxiway eleven to base operations.”

  Inside the hangar was a China Air Transport (CAT) DC-4. The pilots, standing by the wheels, were American. General Black was not surprised. CAT was an offspring of American involvement with Chiang Kai-shek’s China, starting with the American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers) before the United States was officially involved in World War II.

  The air force brigadier general came in from outside and walked to General Black and saluted. Black shook his hand.

  “We about ready to get this show on the road?” General Black asked.

  “No, sir,” the air force brigadier said. He handed General Black a sheet of yellow teletype paper.

  URGENT

  HQ USAF WASH DC

  TO: CG K16 AFB

  DELAY DEPARTURE CAT SEOUL-HANOI CHARTER FOR TWO ADDITIONAL PASSENGERS ENROUTE VIA MIL AIR. AUTH: WILLIAMS, MAJ GEN USMC JCS.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” General Black exploded. “I should have known goddamned well those bastards would send somebody from the Pentagon, or the goddamned State Department, to snoop.”

  “I don’t have anything else, General,” the air force brigadier said. “No names. Not even an ETA.” (Estimated Time of Arrival.)

  “What the hell,” Black said. “I don’t have anything better to do anyway than sit around a goddamned hangar with my finger up my ass.”

  “Would the general like a little belt?” the brigadier asked.

  “The general would dearly love a little belt,” Black replied. “But I don’t think this is the time or place.”

  The enormous black master sergeant whom Black had taken along at the last minute came up.

  “General,” he reported, “I’ve got your civvies unpacked. They’re kind of messed up.”

  “Isn’t everything?” General Black replied. “Where are they, Wes?”

  “On the airplane,” the sergeant replied.

  “Everybody else is here?” Black asked the air force brigadier.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Here and in civvies.” He pulled the full-length zipper of his flight suit down, revealing a shirt and tie and brown tweed sports coat.

  “I will change clothes,” General Black announced. “And if the goddamned snoops haven’t shown up by the time I’m finished, then I will have a little belt.”

  General Black boarded the DC-4 and walked up the aisle to the front, where his orderly had unpacked a footlocker rushed priority air freight from the United States. Two suits, both of them mussed and creased from long storage, and an equally mussed trio of shirts had been laid across one of the seats.

  He picked the least mussed of the suits, and changed out of his uniform. He understood the necessity of wearing civilian clothing—the shit would really hit the fan if the press found out the Americans were thinking of saving the French’s ass in Indo-China—but he didn’t like it. Particularly since his civvies were mussed up.

  When he was finished, he stepped into the aisle.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “may I have your attention, please?”

  There were five army officers, four generals and the colonel commanding the 187th Regimental Combat Team; four air force generals, two admirals, and a dozen others, officers or enlisted technicians.

  The middle-aged master sergeant in General Black’s party was a cryptographer; the technical sergeant was a cartographer familiar with French military maps; the buck sergeant was a court stenographer Black had brought along to take precise notes; the baby-faced staff sergeant fit no precise military description. Black had often told Colonel Carson Newburgh that S/Sgt Greer was the official court jester. But he was more than that. He had been a buck sergeant with the 223rd Infantry Regiment when he had been sent to XIX Corps to function as a court reporter in a personnel hassle. Carson Newburgh had kept him on for his clerical skills, and somehow he had become part of the inner circle, gradually assuming greater and greater responsibilities and discharging them without fault. He had earned the jealous ire of his enlisted seniors. There had been a choice of getting rid of him, or keeping him and giving him the stripes commensurate with his responsibility, and despite his youth and length of service. They had kept him, and made him a staff sergeant, and Black had never regretted the decision.

  A wall of faces filled the aisle. General Black’s eye fell on S/Sgt Greer.

  “Sergeant Greer,” he said, “is there any reason why you’re still wearing your uniform?”

  “Sir,” Greer replied immediately, “I thought that I would wait until we got where we’re going, and then I’d muss my civvies up.”

  General Black was not the only senior officer in a storage-mussed uniform, and the remark was met first with a muted chuckle, and then a couple of snorts, and finally outright laughter.

  “Gentlemen,” General Black said. “You have just met Sergeant Greer. Unless there are objections, he’ll handle all enlisted arrangements and problems. As you may have sensed, Greer is a past master at taking care of Number One. Colonel Newburgh will handle the officers. I don’t think we’ll have any problems. The French can be quite charming when they want something. I really hate to bring this up, but the situation is delicate, and I think I have to. This whole affair is very secret for what should be obvious reasons. I have to tell you, and this is an order, that you are not to tell anyone, wives, superiors, anyone, where we are, have been, or what we did while we were there. This is just as important as a situation where an air force major general, in London, found himself a lieutenant colonel the next morning after he talked too much.

  “Item Two: No one, myself included, is authorized to promise, or even suggest, anything to the French. We’re there to assess the situation and that’s all.

  “Item Three: We are about to be joined by two VIPs. That’s why we’re sitting here. I don’t know who they are, or what they want. When I find out, I’ll tell you.”

  “General?” the air force brigadier who had met the gooney bird interrupted.

  “Go,” General Black said.

  “A jet bomber that nobody expected is about to land from Honolulu. They asked that I be informed. It’s probably our VIPs.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ten minutes later, the hangar doors began to creak open. A tug hitched itself to the nosewheel of the DC-4 and it was pulled outside. A jeep, painted in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern and with a huge checkerboard flag flying from its rear came across the field. Two men in flight suits got out of it, each carrying a canvas Valv-Pak. General Black saw them out the window.

  “I’ll be goddamned!” he said.

  The two newcomers got aboard. The pilot of the DC-4 immediately started his engines, and the transport lumbered down the taxiway. Then, after a brief pause to test the engines, the plane turned onto the runway, gathered speed, and took off.

  When they had reached altitude, the newcomers made their way forward, to where General Black was seated alone. Colonel Newburgh and the air force brigadier came with them.

  Both men were army officers, both majors, one a muscular, ruggedly handsome Scot, the second a slight, bespectacled Jew.

 
; “Well, Felter,” General Black said, “I see they put you back together again.”

  “Yes, sir,” the little Jew said. “Nearly as good as new. You know how grateful I am.”

  “And where the hell did you find that?” General Black said, pointing to the Scot. “I thought I was rid of him, once and for all.”

  “Colonel Bellmon said he didn’t care what I did, or where I went, General,” the Scot said, “just so long as I stayed out of trouble. So here I am.”

  “And what are you going to do here?” General Black asked, innocently.

  “We’re going to very quietly go have a look at Dien Bien Phu,” Major Felter said.

  “That’s not on the program,” the air force brigadier said flatly, confirming what Black had suspected, that the brigadier was his counterpart even though he was outranked by the air force major general aboard.

  “Yes, sir,” Major Felter said. “I know.”

  “You can’t visit Dien Bien Phu without General Black’s permission,” the air force brigadier said. “And I would strongly suggest he not give it.”

  Felter looked at Black and the air force brigadier. Then he reached into his pocket and handed Black a squarish white envelope. Black read it, and nodded, and then handed it to the air force brigadier general. It was a handwritten note on engraved stationery.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  10 March 54

  Major Felter is traveling at my request. He is to be given whatever assistance he requires.

  DDE

  “And does Mac have friends in very high places, too, Felter?” General Black inquired.

  “Well, sir,” Major Felter said, “he knows you and me.”

  “Goddamnit, Mac,” General Black said. “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m glad to see you.” He grabbed MacMillan’s hand in both of his own.